Onstage at the first Spirit of Achievement Awards Luncheon, a fourth-grader from Barack Obama Charter School asked honoree David Belasco ’85 a question: “What advice would you give a kid like me that wants to be an entrepreneur?”

The crowd at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles burst into cheers and applause.

“The more serious answer is don’t be realistic in your dreams,” Belasco continued. “Be really, really unrealistic. Think of big things and don’t let anybody tell you they’re impossible … and I’ll see you in a few years.”

He’s been there, done that

Belasco knows what he’s talking about. At 29, he gave up a lucrative career with Latham & Watkins — the world’s largest law firm by revenue — for the uncertain path of entrepreneurship and went on to launch, build and sell companies in environmental services and manufacturing.

He was one of four honorees — including KNX business journalist Frank Mottek; Holly Robinson Peete, co-founder of the HollyRod Foundation; and LA Football Club co-owner Tom Penn — at the Junior Achievement of Southern California event on Nov. 4.

“Since 1919, Junior Achievement’s pillars have been workforce readiness, financial literacy and entrepreneurship,” said Monica Farrell, director of development at Junior Achievement of Southern California. “At our heart, we’re an organization founded on teaching entrepreneurship. As a leader at the Lloyd Greif Center at USC Marshall, Dave Belasco represents a school that has helped us in a major way over the past decade or more.”

According to Farrell, USC Marshall part-time and full-time MBAs have volunteered to teach Junior Achievement programs to thousands of K-12 students in local schools for more than 10 years, making them the largest grad school contributor to Junior Achievement worldwide.

Junior Achievement works in more than 120 countries, serving over 10 million students annually. Eighty percent of those students are at schools in low- or middle-income neighborhoods.

Pipeline for entrepreneurs

Belasco said the Lloyd Greif Center looks to Junior Achievement as a pipeline delivering entrepreneurial young people into the community and higher education.

“With 60 courses and 30 professors, as well as incubators, accelerators, contests, funding, angels and mentors, we have everything entrepreneurs need to take their concept to the market,” Belasco said. “The Lloyd Greif Center is the oldest integrated college entrepreneurship program, founded in 1971, but Junior Achievement was teaching entrepreneurship 20 years earlier in Southern California, starting in 1954.

“I’m thrilled to be receiving this award on behalf of the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at USC’s Marshall School of Business,” Belasco added. “Getting to be around young, inspired, driven, curious minds, whether it’s at Junior Achievement or at USC, is the greatest feeling there is.”